


A Time to Every Purpose

by Quickspinner



Series: Learning to Move On [2]
Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Endgame Luka Couffaine/Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug, F/M, Fluff, Lukanette, Moving On, Mutual Pining, Post-Episode: s03 La Marionnettiste 2 | The Puppeteer 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-12
Updated: 2019-09-12
Packaged: 2020-10-17 08:44:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20618225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quickspinner/pseuds/Quickspinner
Summary: It’s been two months since he found her crying on the school stairs, took her to the park, and stopped time with his music so she could have a moment to just be sad. Luka still doesn’t know what happened, but it doesn’t matter. He can tell the next time he sees her that she’s picked herself up and moved on, that some kind of chain has been broken, and she’s learning how to walk unfettered.





	A Time to Every Purpose

**Author's Note:**

> This is sort of a follow up to my story "Until It Doesn't Hurt" but it's in a very different style so I didn't want to make it a second chapter, and really, it can stand alone, but even though it's short it didn't quite fit in with my "All That Remains" collection either, so...here we go.
> 
> I've gotten an influx of lovely comments in the last week or so and I'm so grateful, I've really been having a hard time creatively and it's really helped a lot, so love to you all!

It’s been two months since he found her crying on the school stairs, took her to the park, and stopped time with his music so she could have a moment to just be sad. Luka still doesn’t know what happened, but it doesn’t matter. He can tell the next time he sees her that she’s picked herself up and moved on, that some kind of chain has been broken, and she’s learning how to walk unfettered.

It’s harder on Luka than it should be. He is happy to see her grow freer, happier, more herself, more confident, more beautiful, but he’s often thought that his hopeless love would be easier to bear if she didn’t like him. Like the bards of old, he could watch from afar and build her into a distant dream that fueled his music without really bruising his heart. 

But she does like him, he’s always known it, and Luka can’t stay away. They are drawn together whenever they are in the same space and she remains warm and human and real and impossible. As close as they come, Luka is kept back because there’s a wall around her heart that Adrien doesn’t even know he built.

A wall, Luka realizes one day as he watches her stand by Adrien and smile and laugh and speak in complete sentences, that's been torn down _(a chain has been broken)_ and suddenly Luka understands what was happening that day in the park, the pain that couldn’t be soothed away, only endured until it passed. Now when she smiles at him the song that used to sing _ if only _ changes to a refrain of _ not yet, not yet _ and something inside him trembles. 

So he waits, and works on himself as she works on herself, willing to be worthy of whatever she chooses to become. It’s not easy, because now that he knows to look, he can see the way her eyes seek him even when she is speaking to Adrien. He can see the flutter of her hands when she realizes she has come too close, the stumble of her feet as she tries to maintain a distance that is becoming more difficult for both of them, and he hears the now-constant refrain of _ not yet, not yet _ thrumming in harmony through both their veins.

Sometimes their eyes meet and Luka’s fingers fumble on the guitar strings in a way that hasn’t happened in years. The way he loves her has been a constant, cool river in his soul he has been content to drift down, steady and unchanging. But as _ not yet _ slowly becomes _ soon _, the river churns and rushes and roars. He can hear her breath catch when she sees the change in his eyes and he looks away quickly, focusing on the chords and on moving the breath through his own lungs. Luka hadn’t realized until now that he had been guarding his heart against the day she broke it for good, but now that he has hope, he finds there was deeper for him to go, and he can only wait for permission to plunge.

The night of the music festival, after the daytime concerts have all been played and the Paris night is alive with music, the whole city singing a thousand different melodies, he hears at last the crescendo he has been waiting for. Their eyes meet and he takes her hand and they slip away from their friends, walking aimlessly until they find an open air concert in a park and room to stand half-hidden beneath an old tree. The arm he slips around her waist is a question and the way she turns to him and lifts her face is almost an answer, but he waits until she reaches up to put her arms around his neck and he hears _ now _ in the music of the hushed words between them. His heart sings back _ at last _as it presses against hers. Their first kiss is an apology, their second is forgiveness, and their third is a promise that lasts.


End file.
